La Bella Bridal is a valued customer of Essio’s and it has been a privilege to watch and help them grow. Having initially struggled to make any impact at all online with their brand new flash website, La Bella’s owners Ian and Josie, approached Essio interested in our SEO Services and Pay Per Click management, with one objective in mind; ‘to get to page one on Google for the search phrase ‘wedding Dresses Exeter’.  This initial objective, after thorough research and consultation was then developed to encompass a broad selection of keywords that where both relative to La Bella’s products as well as their location. For example ‘bridal shop Exeter’, ‘mother of the bride Devon’, ‘wedding dresses south west’ etc, we decided to target all relative keywords to ensure a good return on investment for our SEO Level 1.

Page 1 ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN’s search engines was achieved for all keywords within a three month period at which stage La Bella decided to upgrade to SEO level 2 and target more competitive keywords. With traffic steadily increasing from two hundred visits a month up to over five thousand visits a month La Bella increased the level of SEO to target the highest level national keywords such as ‘mother of the bride’ and ‘wedding dresses’ and to have a full re design carried out by Essio.

Recently Essio achieved high Google rankings for both ‘mother of the bride’ and ‘wedding dresses’ increasing monthly visits to over 15,000 whilst achieving a bounce rate of less than 10%. We felt that in order to fully take advantage of this level of visits and interaction a new strategy was necessary. Through close liaison between our team and La Bella’s owners it was agreed that an online shopping facility offering a range of high quality Wedding Accessories and handmade Wedding Jewellery would offer the ideal service to accompany the clothing range already available.

We are pleased to report that La Bella’s online shop was launched and ready for business on Monday 30^th November with an initial selection of quality wedding accessories and jewellery. We aim to have over three hundred products live before Christmas ready for the annual New Year surge in interest from next year’s brides to be. I’d just like to finish by thanking Ian and Josie for their continued faith and loyalty and wish them as much success in 2010 as was achieved in 2009.

Many stores now offer shoppers the ability to buy online and then collect in store, big names such as Argos, Comet and John Lewis to name but a few. Think about it, who has the time to traipse from store to store comparing products and prices? In my opinion very few people, the perfect and most convenient answer, I think, has to be, to be able to research online at any time of day or night then order your goods and collect them from a local store at a time that suits you.

Talk about getting the best of both worlds…..

I recently purchased a laptop and wanted to ensure that I had the absolute best product for my money before handing over my hard earned. In St Helens we have one of those retail parks with exactly the same selection of stores, give or take, as every other UK town or city.

Being a bit of a punter I didn’t want to give some sales person the opportunity to persuade me to buy something either unsuitable or over budget, perhaps by throwing in some security software that I didn’t need. So I spent some time in the evenings and at lunch researching and reading customer reviews to find the best possible laptop that had a fast processor, decent size Ram and hard drive memory.

Once I had a good idea of what I could expect to get for my money I carried out a few searches to check out my local stores. I narrowed my preferences down to two laptops that fell within my minimum and maximum amount and had the performance and memory I was after. I went online at about half past ten on the Sunday evening and chose the system that had the best processor of the two as opposed to the slightly bigger hard drive. I purchased my laptop online at about eleven and then picked it up the following evening on my way home from work.

I have to say it was a refreshing and hassle free experience, and to spend that amount of money and be so confident that I had purchased the best possible product for the price was extremely satisfying.

The Big Boys Push Online??

With time seemingly at more of a premium these days, many people struggle to find the time to sift through shop after shop looking for the right products at the right price. Bargains are far more important to people in today’s economic climate and the internet has got to be by far the most convenient way to compare prices and review products.

John Lewis is currently looking to expand its share of the continually growing internet market available and is trialling a “click & collect” service at present. With plans to allow shoppers to collect their orders from any one of its sister company, Waitrose’s, 200 stores, John Lewis obviously see’s the internet as a great way to take the company forward.

Argos is another major brand that offers a similarly convenient service and just last week announced that their “Click & Reserve” service was up by a massive 50% on last year’s sales.

Shop Locally Online

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, it seems that only the bigger brands are offering this kind of service to its customers. Smaller retailers tend to stick to online purchasing with delivery or shop in store without the ability to purchase online and collect in store.

I see a great opportunity for local businesses to increase their market share by offering this type of convenient service. Locally targeted search engine marketing campaigns offer great value for money, whether using SEO services or pay per click to promote a business website.

Keyword search phrases that include locality are in many cases low competition, which means that top rankings can be achieved quickly. These keyword phrases also so offer much cheaper costs per click on search engine pay per click networks leading to greater and quicker returns on investment.

In my opinion small local businesses that have online stores should seriously consider offering customers the ability to pay online and collect in store. This would allow shoppers and shop owners the option of saving on delivery costs and delivery time. It also gives people a much better opportunity get a feel for a business and become regular customers.